


Through the Fire

by FannyT



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Extremis, F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, Post Iron Man 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FannyT/pseuds/FannyT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her hair crackles and blackens and curls, the noise spitting and hissing in her ears, and her nails are white-hot talons in her clenched hands.</i>
</p><p>The Extremis was a dream come true for the veterans lured into the scheme. For Pepper, it's a waking nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I loved Pepper with the Extremis -- so much -- but in this story, I wanted to explore the less awesome side of the matter.

Pepper is burning.

Her hair crackles and blackens and curls, the noise spitting and hissing in her ears, and her nails are white-hot talons in her clenched hands. She wants to shout, but the air in her lungs is burning away; she can feel the heat boiling up in her throat, longing to escape her body in a jet of flame. The sheets are on fire around her. And Tony, beside her, is—

Pepper wakes gasping, clawing at her throat with nails that are bitten-down and ragged but safe. She's safe. Her skin is hot, but humanly so—feverish, not explosive. 

She looks down. Tony is sleeping heavily beside her. There's a small frown creasing his face, but his hands are still and his chest moves quietly and steadily with every calm breath. She finally talked him into getting some sleep medication a month or so ago, and after he allowed Dr Banner to tinker a bit with the formula, Tony finally started sleeping—dreamlessly, she believes, at least most of the time. 

Pepper hasn't talked to Dr Banner herself yet. They're still testing her, blood samples once a day and full body work-ups every Friday. Any medication for her will have to wait until after the full results of her Extremis exams come in. She imagines the SHIELD team quietly excited as they examine her mutated genes, plotting how to reproduce the effects, creating super soldiers and walking weapons. 

She presses her hands together, palm to palm, and wills the shaking to stop. When she looks down at them she imagines them red-hot, beginning to sizzle, so she closes her eyes and breathes, in and out, slowly and rhythmically like Dr Banner showed her. Still without opening her eyes, she lies down again slowly and reaches out, putting an arm around Tony to take his hand—very softly, because if she squeezes, she'll break bone. He mutters in his sleep, and she smiles to herself, then bites her lip. 

If she lies here like this, she can almost convince herself that she's a normal woman, holding her normal man as he sleeps. 

The night air is cold against her skin. She thinks of steam rising from her pores, curling upwards in the still room, and squeezes her eyes shut tighter as she drifts into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Two days later, she catches sight of herself in a mirrored surface unexpectedly and has to stifle a scream. She runs her hands over her face and then looks again, more carefully this time. Yellow light glinting on red hair, nothing more. She's not on fire. 

She forces her breathing to become steady, running her hands through her hair distractedly, and then she picks up her cell and dials her salon.

When Tony arrives back home that evening he looks at her newly-dyed brown hair, but he doesn’t say anything. He takes her in his arms and holds her instead, and she cradles her arms around him with the gentlest of touches. She longs to hug him tight, but instead she only lets her hands flutter over his back, stroking but not holding.

They stand together for a long time, not talking at all; two shattered people picking up each other's pieces as best they can.

* * *

Natasha comes to see her one day. Pepper's in her office, trying to just _make sense_ of the latest figures from China, when suddenly Natasha is there, standing in the doorway with her usual air of subdued menace. 

"Agent Romanov," Pepper says, startled. "Are you looking for Tony? He usually doesn't come in until after lunch..."

"I'm looking for you," Natasha says, and there's something in her face and voice, something Pepper would call kindness if she could be sure that what she's seeing is Natasha's real expression. "And please call me Natasha. Or Natalie, if you prefer."

"Natasha," Pepper says with a smile. It'll never be Natalie, because the one time Pepper slipped up and said it, she saw Natasha _change_ , right before her eyes. Nothing big or obvious, but there was a certain relaxing of posture here and a certain pout to her smile there, and it was, for just a moment, a whole other persona Pepper was talking to. "What did you want me for?"

Natasha looks away momentarily. "Banner has been talking," she says. "If you want, I'd like you to come to the gym. Do a bit of sparring with me."

"An evaluation?" Pepper asks, but knows already that it would be off-schedule, in that case. This is something else. 

"A help," Natasha says. "Hopefully." She gives Pepper a look, then takes a few steps into the room and sits down in front of the desk. 

"When I was recruited to SHIELD," she says quietly, "there were tests that needed to be done. One of them involved hypnotising me, to see what I was capable of without the restraint of my mind. They needed to be _sure_ ," Natasha makes a wry face, "of what my skills really were."

Pepper doesn't say anything. 

"I put two agents in hospital," Natasha says. "They were fine, but they might just as easily not have been. So—what I'm trying to say is, I know what it's like to be afraid of your own body. You might never be able to get over that completely. But the more you know about what you can do and the more you test your own strength, the better you can prepare yourself. I think I can help you learn control."

Pepper swallows. "Tony is going to fix me," she says. 

Natasha puts her head to one side. "Is there anything to fix?" she asks. "Banner says your version of Extremis is stable. It'll heal you; keep you safe."

"And make me _not me_ ," Pepper says. She takes a deep breath, pressing her palms down flat against the desk. "I'm not like you. I can't live with this—all this power. It frightens me."

Natasha scrutinises her for some time, then nods. "Then I hope Tony can fix you," she says. "But until then, if you want to learn how to use all that power of yours, you know where to find me."

She smiles, then, and it softens all her dark edges, the danger that always hangs around her fading into the background for a while. 

"I wouldn't mind having a sparring partner I know I can't hurt, either," she adds.

* * *

Training with Natasha helps, for a little while. Punching and kicking and wrestling helps burn away some of the energy thrumming under Pepper's skin, and for those hours she spends in the gym, she doesn't have to think. It's not enough, however. She can feel herself getting stronger and faster with every session—when all she really wants is to lose power, not gain even more of it. 

She starts to run every morning. Her feet blister and chafe in her shoes as she runs, faster than what is pleasant or healthy, but when she arrives back at the house they are healed again. 

She finds herself taking risks. One day, she falls down a slope while running, feeling her skin split and heal and then split again as she hits against rocks and scrapes shins and elbows. When she's back on level ground and on her feet again, she checks herself over and finds only smooth unblemished skin under her torn clothes. 

On the way home, she crosses a street without looking and is almost run over, and she starts laughing. She laughs as she runs the rest of the way across the street and picks up her pace, heading for home faster and faster until she's racing along, dodging both cars and people with careless speed. She's still laughing when she stumbles in through their door, and Tony catches her in trembling arms.

* * *

Pepper wakes up in a hospital bed, cool white sheets pressing against her hot skin. She gulps for breath, disoriented and panic-stricken. 

Tony's beside her in an instant, gripping her hand tight in both of his. 

"No," she says, her voice hoarse and dry. "Tony, I'll hurt you. Tony, I'm going to burn up, I'm too hot, you have to leave..."

"You have a fever," he says, and his grip only tightens. "We did it, Pepper. We cracked the code. The Extremis is gone. You're safe, but the transformation took it out of your system. This is only a fever."

His words are running into each other, and she's so tired, but some meaning filters through the fog. She turns her senses inwards and searches, and she finds nothing of the raw power that previously ran through her veins like fire. 

For a strange, fleeting moment she misses it, but then the relief swamps her, and for the first time since the Extremis burned through her body, the tears come. She hasn't cried until now, some part of her always afraid that the tears would vaporise before they could leave her body, but now she cries like a child. 

"Tony," she chokes out between sobs, and she can't make out his reply but his hands never let go of hers.

* * *

There is, later, not even a trace of regret. 

Pepper knows that's probably strange, that she had what anyone could wish for—a body that healed itself, stronger and faster and more powerful than she could ever be again. But it was too much. It brought with it the taste of danger in every waking moment and a recklessness that frightened her. 

She's Pepper again, and Tony's beside her, the bags under his eyes growing less marked with every day. He's just started sleeping without medication, and she lies beside him at night, holding him tightly. And if ever she hears the sound of something sizzling and turns her head, for a moment frightened again, he's by her side with his hand steady on hers. 

"Fine" is hovering on the horizon. If she reaches out, and Tony reaches with her, she's sure that she can almost touch it.


End file.
